


Out of the Empty

by Cuda (Scylla)



Category: Supernatural, Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Castiel Has Dreams (Supernatural), Castiel is Bad at Feelings (Supernatural), Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Empty!Meg - Freeform, Episode: s15e18 Despair, Fix-It, Harkstiel, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Moving On, SuperWood, Superwho, The Empty (Supernatural), The Many Deaths of Jack Harkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27458881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scylla/pseuds/Cuda
Summary: Like Keith Richards said, you can't always get what you want. The Empty gets what it asked for, but its momentary triumph is shattered when the angel in question won't stopdreaming. What's an eons-old entity of entropy to do to get some peace?Find a loophole.
Relationships: Castiel (Supernatural)/Jack Harkness
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	Out of the Empty

In the belly of the Empty, Castiel dreamed. His greatest hits, glowing and fading like flashbulbs. Nightmares with bones of memory, twisted into screaming monsters by his guilt. It could have been due to his first escape. The whole business was unprecedented.

If it cared for the answer, the Empty would seek it. Like Castiel, however; it was not made to be curious. Unlike Castiel, the Empty bored of its existence eons ago. A question in want of an answer would solve itself in time. And time would go on, whether or not the Empty found the reasons behind one Garrison grunt's noisy subconscious.

A deal was a deal, and Castiel was the Empty's prize.

But _would_ he _stop_.

Oblivious, Castiel dreamed on. Absurd things, inexplicable things. Dreams of sleek black cars on fire and calculus and the color teal. Of caverns full of horrors and warm-lit dinners surrounded by the bloodied faces of dead siblings. His dreams became the tides of the Empty's red-eyed thoughts.

Worse still, Castiel refused to wake. The consciousness left behind by death did not want to exist. It shrank from all seductions, as if that wily angel detected the Empty's intent. So he slept, deep and willful, a gnat humming endlessly in the Empty's metaphorical ear.

Had Castiel known, he might have been satisfied. He knew why he was here. They were not friends. All those the Empty might call friends - if it was inclined to have any, and it certainly was not - were quiet. As they should be.

Fortunately, Castiel slept through it, missing a golden opportunity to gloat.

Until Jack arrived.

Well, not that Jack. Another Jack. A Jack whose world knew nothing of Castiel, although likely he existed there in some form or other. A Jack whose name wasn't really Jack, but had forgotten the first name so long ago that it hardly mattered.

This Jack was someone the Empty knew. In a way. Not in a way that involved conversation. More in the manner of suspicious surveillance.

Jack Harkness first arrived a while ago, somewhere in the gooey, wobbly ball of time. He'd become quite the repeat customer, day tripping among the Empty's sleepers, never long enough to disturb the peace. He wandered. He shouted. But the Empty was vast, and it was the flick of a thought to shift the slumbering inhabitants out of his path.

He was entirely human, with something extra. Something that deposited him here, and dragged him out again.

Death remained tight-lipped about him, but that was Death for you.

Watching Jack make his way through the dark, tasting the bitter human loneliness in him, the Empty had an idea.

With a brush of will, it slipped Castiel into Jack's way. The purposeful stride ran aground over the dead angel's feet. Jack went sprawling.

Far away, Castiel stirred.

The Empty held its figurative breath.

Castiel's thoughts ordered and settled, processing memories. Condensing into a sense of self, a sense of purpose.

Pain followed, searing Castiel's consciousness.

His purpose was no longer relevant. His sense of self was fractured, whole pieces carved away by loss. The Empty felt the barely conscious mind flail with panic, and sever its tenuous grasp. It sank away, putting layers of abstraction between itself and the present.

—And a broad, gentle hand patted Castiel's shoulder. Then his cheek.

A broad, gentle voice said, "Well, you're new."

The first change was barely perceptible, brought on by touch. The Empty only noticed it in hindsight, exasperated as it was by its recent near miss. Castiel's thoughts took on new shapes. They shifted in sympathy to the tang of Jack's fear. To the cool apple crispness of his curiosity.

"Hey, you alive?" Jack asked. When the question got no response, he sat back with a sigh. "Good. Me neither. Otherwise this would be awkward."

The Empty watched. Expectant. Hopeful, if such a thing could be ascribed to entropy.

"Guess you're a little deader," Jack said, "still, nice to see a friendly face. In a manner of speaking." The gentle hand drifted up, sorting Castiel's tousled bangs.

"And what a face it is," Jack sighed, "The cute ones in here are always unavailable."

In Castiel's dreams there were suddenly smart-mouthed women and earnest men, calling him sexually attractive in an interminable number of methods. It wasn't silence, but it was different. The Empty leaned closer and watched a little more.

Until that inexplicable force whisked Jack out again. Castiel sank like a stone in a pond, into abstractions of tattered streets where smart-mouthed women and earnest men cracked and glowed at the seams like kindling, and burned to black bones.

* * *

To say the Empty cared would be a gross overstatement.

This angel that refused to be quiet must be dealt with, but there would be silence after. Things would happen eventually; Jack would return. Whatever Jack was, entropy was the inevitable. If it wasn't Jack's master, it certainly kept him spinning a waltz.

The Empty had time.

Jack came back. It was no effort at all to lead him to Castiel. Jack reliably took it from there, doing what he reliably did.

Talk.

"Who are you?" Jack asked. "Where did you come from? I've been through everything I ever recorded about this place. You're not in any of it."

He spoke for the sake of speaking, to himself as to the angel. He made the silence his enemy, and if the Empty had teeth, they'd be gritted.

"You're lucky, you know. A few years ago, there was a thing in here that hunted me."

Now, the Empty didn't put much store in memories. Without the humans' frail configuration of fat and nerves and hormones, memories were less of an experience and more of an archive. It didn't bother to remember things; it slept. But the scene playing in Jack's mind was familiar, and still managed to be unpleasant.

Early in their on-again, off-again acquaintance, the Empty watched Jack closely. Unused to human minds in its realm and unaware of how a conscious human mind might interpret its surveillance, it hadn't connected Jack's fear to its attention in the slightest.

"A hero named Owen Harper killed it," Jack said, "long story."

The Empty didn't like to talk about that. It didn't like to talk about anything, but especially not that.

It busied itself elsewhere, leaving Jack to finish his story with an audience of one.

Castiel listened, and dreamed of being hunted.

* * *

Sometimes, when Jack returned, he reported his research. How he delved through vast archives in search of some clue. Castiel haunted him, it seemed; taking hold in quite the opposite way the Empty intended.

"One of these days you're going to wake up, and be so embarrassed you slept on this gorgeous face," Jack said.

Yes, do, the Empty whispered at Castiel in irritation. Wake up.

But as always, the angel evaded him. His nightmares had good, sturdy legs. They could run forever, and seemed so inclined.

Jack left, and returned. Spilled an ocean of words. Paced circles. Left, and returned. Cried at Castiel's shoulder, one hand sandwiched between his own. Sang. Burned with emotions the Empty had never witnessed.

The shapes of Castiel's dreams were different now. His thoughts flashed new colors; hot yellows and reds, electric pinks and blues. He ran not from something now, but towards it. The Empty couldn't say when the angel reversed direction, and it didn't matter. Castiel hacked through endless forests and scaled insurmountable walls, but he didn't wake.

* * *

When Jack arrived a few decades later, he looked at Castiel a long time, hands in the pockets of his greatcoat. Studying him like a man lingering in an art gallery on holiday. Like a man who knew exactly how much time he had to fill.

"I thought you'd be gone,"Jack said. When there was no answer, he knelt, and picked up one of Castiel's hands. The warm, quiet fingers hadn't moved from where he'd last put them down. "I don't check up though, I promise. I—can't say I haven't thought about it though. Things are—"

Jack rubbed Castiel's fingers like a talisman. Castiel drifted up, like Jack was a fire he'd like to warm himself by.

"—I'm going to tell you about someone."

Castiel didn't answer, but his mind fell into a soft, listening silence.

"His name was Ianto Jones," Jack said, "He wasn't a good man, not exactly. But he was better than most. Better than me. Loyal. Mysterious. Exactly how I like them." He gave a wet laugh. "He was human. So human. And for a while, he was mine."

The silence of Castiel's mind was total. New. Blissful to the Empty. It didn't mind as Jack filled the void, talking about this human. For a life intertwined with his so briefly, he remembered an astounding amount of detail. He talked about good coffee, space whales, prehistoric birds, triumphs and failures, sex and adventures and near-misses. The Empty wasn't capable of being impressed, but before too long it found itself listening closely. This 'Ianto' fellow, painted with Jack's brush, was more vivid a life than any angel or demon in the Empty's vast reaches. Jack was a creature familiar with the messy brevity of human life, yet even the petty smallnesses of Ianto's existence held value.

"I can't shake this one. It's been years, but I can't." Jack smiled and looked up, into the endless void, "When I saw you, I thought about him. A long time before you showed up, this place was empty. But it was easier, knowing when I got back he'd be there. They'd be there. Now it's reversed. They're all gone and the familiar face is you, in here. I'm sorry I don't know your name, but I'm glad to see you. I hope it's not too bad for you, being in here with me."

Castiel's mind was quiet a long time afterward. He drifted near the surface, well within reach.

When his thoughts returned, they were orderly. People. _His_ people. The humans he'd loved. He tried to paint them the way Jack had, with the love and wonder that were his tormentors in earlier years. They glowed beneath his hands like stars, like suns, radiant with the force of an old Heaven's glory. A being made to love humanity, loved as he was bade, with a depth and a truth that God Himself had no power to fashion.

The Empty listened, and let him be.

* * *

It could have been fifty years or a hundred past when Jack returned, but something was different. He was silent, his mind dark with pain so palpable that it stirred not only Castiel, but the appetites of every angel and demon slumbering within earshot. He hunkered down beside Castiel, curled on his side away from him, and didn't speak.

He was there a long time. The Empty pushed them both as far away as it could, and turned its attention to the sleepers Jack woke with his agony.

When he left, the relief was shortlived; Jack was back again a moment later. Intertwined with the burn of suffocation was rage akin to madness, and a certain hopelessness. This was drowning, but of a different sort. A kind he had no hope of freeing himself from.

He would come and go like this, again and again. The Empty kicked them as far away as it dared.

Jack laced Castiel's unresisting fingers through his own. Lay close and still, cheek to the floor.

The forests and the walls in Castiel's mind were replaced by this puzzle box of a human, with a broad, gentle voice and broad, gentle hands, stained with grief and pain.

Castiel dreamed of turning to him. Comforting him. Pulling him close the way humans needed.

From far away, the Empty heard something that was more memory than dream, whispering, this is the part where you hug back.

Around Jack's fingers, Castiel's twitched. Tightened.

He turned his head and found Jack's eyes.

They gazed at each other in surprise without speaking, and though 'breathless' was a word reserved for things with respiration, the Empty looked on with more than mild anticipation. It listened to the flickering of Castiel and Jack's thoughts, the way a small child might listen for the ocean within a seashsell - at least as much as it could fathom things like "seashells" and "children."

"Good morning," Jack said.

"Who are you?" Castiel replied, squeezed his eyes and added, "you aren't the Empty."

"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack said, easy and soft, "who are you? And what's the Empty? Is that what you call this?" He waved a hand at the space around them, "That's the best name, I think. It's the emptiest place I've ever seen."

The Empty turned up the lights a little.

Castiel gave Jack a long, measuring look. "Not that it matters, but you aren't an angel, and you don't seem like a demon."

"I get that a lot."

"My point is, why are you here?"

"I could ask you the same question. I've been around this block a few times. _You're_ the new face."

"My name is Castiel," Castiel said, "I'm—I was. An angel of— I was an angel."

Jack's eyebrows raced one another to bury themselves in his hairline. That prompted another question. And a counter question. They went around a few times, until the Empty bored of them. It left them to their talking, assuming something would come of it eventually. They buzzed in the back of the Empty's thoughts while they got to know one another, and it tried to ignore them.

Things were said. Interminable questions and answers, none of which satisfied the questioners and none of which were relevant to the Empty's goals. It waited for an attachment to form. This was how humans bonded, according to the sleeping memories around it. Most species bonded by communicating.

But Jack maintained a wariness that showed no signs of abatement, nor boiling over into more than curiosity. And Castiel—

Castiel was not likely to love anyone again, anytime soon.

From the moment he came to full consciousness, the pain greeted him. The hopelessness, the loss. He remembered his dreams, the Empty saw, but Castiel's reactions to their kaleidoscope horror was all wrong.

Acceptance. Relief. Confirmation. A rough peace, cobbled out of suffering.

The Godforsaken _martyr_.

The Empty considered borrowing a face the angel knew just to taunt him out of frustration, but decided it wasn't worth the trouble when Castiel thought he'd deserve it.

This was going to take FOREVER.

Jack left, as Jack was wont to do. Castiel watched the space where he'd been, puzzled, and got to his feet. He wandered a while, calling for Jack with growing concern, until a new thought stopped him short. He was suspicious. He wondered if he'd been duped all along. If this was some ploy to further his torment.

"You only wish you were that important," the Empty sneered, in Castiel's own voice.

"Screw you," Castiel said, and went back to sleep.

* * *

He slept for a few more years after that, dreaming about Jack when he wasn't dreaming about snakes and geometry and fuchsia. He ran away from the Empty harder than ever, but came easily to hand at the first glimmer of Jack's presence.

It hadn't been a fun death. It hadn't even been a good death. A bad move in a baker's dozen of bad moves, begun with good intentions and ending with a crate of explosives on a space freighter. The Empty read his recent memories like a new book in a favorite series.

Jack grimaced in phantom pain. "All right, you know what? This has been a bad day. You know what they don't tell you about about a dimethyl cadmium bomb? It oxidizes into another bomb. Plus, just found out it depressurized the ship."

"The ship?" Castiel echoed, "What ship?"

Jack shrugged. "Doesn't matter. If I can get to the distress beacon, somebody will be out here. Eventually."

He left.

Jack was back several times in succession after that, each time reporting his progress as he tried to navigate a space coated in explosive metal.

"Almost to the door," Jack reported, "what's left of it."

Then he was gone, and back again.

The situation changed. Jack was trapped now, as the successive explosions destabilized the freighter and a massive free-floating piece of detritus squeezed in on him. He hadn't reached his goal.

"Think I might be out here a while," Jack sighed, "Whoops, starting to burn again." He rubbed the center of his chest, coughed a laugh, and tossed Castiel a wink. "Be seeing you, Castiel. Find a pack of cards and I'll show you how to play Rummy."

That inexorable power yanked him out of the Empty.

Castiel got to his feet. Squared his shoulders. Raised his eyes to the void, and said with doubled fists, "I know you're here. Show yourself."

The direct address seemed to catch them both off guard. The Empty borrowed Meg's face just to twist the knife a little, as a treat. She let the shadows slide away, shaking her short blonde hair. "Morning, sleepyhead," she drawled, "about time you stopped ignoring me."

Castiel's expression creased. "I don't know what you mean."

"Sure you do," The Empty said, tapping her temple, "rustle around in that little gourd of yours. Those special features you've had on loop the last few decades? You think you're the only one who gets the pleasure of your self-flagellating hamster wheel? You just can't do as you're told, can you, Clarence? Show's over, but even when you go to sleep, you won't shut up."

The Empty watched as recognition washed over Castiel's features. He flopped his arms. "Stop this. You have me. You can throw me in the abyss, or rip me to pieces."

"You think this is a trick?" the Empty asked in surprise.

"He's not real. He doesn't belong here." Castiel swallowed and closed his eyes, straining the desperation out of his voice, "I don't know why you're doing this, but stop it."

"No, you stop it? Seems to me that saving people was your gig, back in the day."

Castiel had nothing to say in response. He looked away, fists squeezing tight, and the Empty savored the blissful silence.

"No takers?" she needled.

More silence.

"Or don't you want to? Be a hero? Save the day? Wait," the Empty squinted, "you know he's real."

"Please," Castiel said weakly, "if you can't kill me, put me back to sleep."

The Empty took a sip of her Merlot. The bowl of rich red wine was never out of her hand, but it was forged in shadows for effect. If the Empty had to be awake, she preferred a little showmanship. "Well isn't this a pickle," she mused. "If I do that, you get exactly what you want. You're so hot to fall on a sword, it's kinda kinky."

She waved at the dark and Castiel's slumbering brothers and sisters. "I mean, an angel with a death wish is not exactly news. But you," the Empty gave a low whistle, "I've seen those nightmares of yours, Castiel. I know what you're really afraid of, and let me tell you. It ain't anything in my little ol' bag of tricks."

Castiel bristled. He took an aggressive step towards the Empty on her throne, as if she wasn't the woman, the demon, the throne and the dark around them all. As if he could actually threaten her. "You want something," he growled, "and it's not a social call. So get on with it."

"Oh, back off before you pull something," the Empty replied, "you're not exactly in a position to make demands, and I'll get on with it when I'm good and ready."

In the back of her mind, the Empty felt Jack's return. She dropped him into place like a queen on a chessboard, and rolled the shadows back from him like a curtain. She lolled against the padded backrest of her throne then and crossed one knee over the other, to watch the fireworks.

"We've got company?" Jack asked, rubbing his throat. Castiel spun around, and the Empty smiled to see his thoughts shift away from her. To feel his fear.

There it was, she thought. The sweetness of being right.

"She's the Empty," Castiel explained, "the part that talks, anyway."

Jack cocked his head. "Like an avatar?"

From her throne, the Empty registered deep shock - hers and Castiel's simultaneously.

"Yes," Castiel said slowly, "exactly… exactly like an avatar."

Jack peered at the Empty across Castiel's shoulder. "Nice place you've got here. Captain Jack Harkness, who are you?"

"The Empty," said Castiel and the Empty in unison. They paused to look at each other, annoyed in equal measure, which only served to annoy the Empty further.

"Oh," Jack said with a smile, "My mistake. I thought maybe that was just something he called you."

"I'm not going to call something—"

"Someone," Jack corrected with the same smile.

Castiel bristled.

The Empty hid her grin behind her wine glass. Oh, this was good. This was almost as nice as peace and quiet. Not quite, but close.

"Someone," Castiel echoed tightly, "anything other than their name. What are you implying?"

"I'm implying that maybe I should be nice to someone who might be keeping me from feeling my lungs boil," Jack responded, the light evenness of his tone a stark contrast to the visuals he painted.

The Empty switched knees, and kicked her ankles over the arm of her throne. "Now see, if more people were like you, I might nap less."

They shared a smile, and Castiel shot the Empty a poisonous look.

"We were just having a discussion about whether or not to save you," the Empty said to Jack, "Not that I haven't enjoyed you boys and your endless talking, but I'm overdue for a little me-time. But he's a big ol' chicken, aren't you, Castiel?"

"You're not going to let me go," Castiel said in disbelief, "I'm here because you wanted me here. You made a deal."

"Sure I did. Back when I thought you wouldn't like it here so much."

Jack put a hand on Castiel's shoulder. "You're trapped here?"

They hadn't touched since Castiel woke. The Empty felt Castiel's fear roar under the warmth of Jack's palm; felt him go tense. He was fighting it, the brave little toaster, but he didn't stand a chance. Not after the Empty got a taste of Captain Jack Harkness's memories. Enough self-doubt and grief and past mistakes to make Castiel's offenses look like jaywalking. She only held so much sway here, but this very human-est of humans was exactly the kind of handful Castiel needed. And feared. She'd just tossed him celestial catnip and he knew it and hated it.

You know, this was getting to be sort of fun.

"He can leave if I let him," the Empty replied, "but we've all got a part to play, and a deal's a deal. I can't let him go back to his world. I did it once, and all I got was ten minutes of peace and quiet and then a hundred-year-headache, Death up my ass, and a full-time job putting a population the size of Manhattan back to sleep."

Everyone was silent for a beat. The Empty raised an eyebrow as Jack shook his head.

"Well, that's a new one for me," Jack said.

"So what?" Castiel demanded, "You want quiet but you won't kill me, you want me to save him but you won't let me go."

"I didn't say I wouldn't let you go," the Empty said, "but if you go, you can't go to your universe. You go to his." She gestured at Jack, who moved abreast of Castiel to face the Empty as a unit. Little creatures always teamed up against the big bad formless void. Adorable.

Castiel looked shellshocked. He suddenly remembered he had hands, and held them out to the Empty, fingers tensed into claws. "Chuck burned all the other universes. There's only one left."

"Chuck burned his universes. You think he's the only maker? Honey, I'm just the center of a great big pinwheel. And there's plenty of petals that aren't Chuck's, you get me? His aren't even the first. Derivatives, at best."

Jack disappeared again. Castiel bent forward, like the weight of the hand on his shoulder had been his anchor. His head hung over like he'd run a marathon. His thoughts whirled, ping-ponging emotions until a lesser entity might have gone woozy.

"Time's up, cupcake," the Empty said, "you get where this is going."

"What's in this for you?" Castiel demanded, without looking up. He braced his hands on his knees. "And don't say 'peace and quiet.'"

"You don't come back here for a long, long time," the Empty said, "and when you do, I throw you back out again. In the meantime, I go back to sleep, with the pleasure of knowing how much it hurts you to keep on living."

"You can't make me," Castiel snarled.

"Sure I can. But I don't have to," the Empty said, "you'll do it yourself. Admit it - you're curious. A world your daddio didn't get his fingerprints all over? What would that be like? I see inside your head, Clarence. You're thinking it might be nice to go somewhere without The Grand Story, and that's breaking your loyal little heart."

Castiel didn't answer. He didn't have to.

The Empty took one last sip of her tasteless Merlot, snuffed it into shadows, and left him to his thoughts. He was a wreck, tortured as much by the newly opened door as he was by the permanent closure of the old one. The possibility of escape and the guilt of wanting it spun around and around in his mind.

"If I go," Castiel said, "what happens to me? To how I'm—how I'm made. To my Grace."

The Empty shrugged. "You'll figure it out. Look, this is my domain. I don't know what's out there unless it rode through my doors in someone's memory. You want to know? You leave with him when he comes back, and you save him, and you find out."

As if on cue, Jack returned one more time. The Empty brought him to Castiel, and waited.

"Hello, Jack," Castiel said. He was a long time about meeting Jack's eyes. "I was wondering if you could use some help."

Jack's welcoming smile vanished. "I can always use a little help," he said, somberly, "But if you're coming with me, are you going to be all right? It's pretty stuffy up there in space. And it's freezing. I get the feeling you can hold your own, but - no offense - you seem a little. Y'know. Carbon-based."

Castiel shrugged. He could feel the tendrils of power taking hold of Jack one more time. At his back, the force of the Empty pushed in, vibrating as it built in readiness to uncoil. An unfathomable future loomed ahead, full of nothing he recognized and nothing he could predict. "I don't see as there's much choice but to find out," he said.

Jack offered his hand. "Oh, you've always got a choice."

"I know," Castiel said, feeling the warm pressure of Jack's fingers close around his, "don't remind me."

**Author's Note:**

> Two middle fingers way, _way_ up at Supernatural foreverrrrrrrrr. Whatever, network chucklefucks, he's dead so he's _mine_ now.
> 
> Back when Castiel first woke up in the Empty, I probably blasted the eardrums of every friend I had about its striking similarities to Jack Harkness's experience of death. So I've had this story cooking as a backdoor to sneak Castiel out of Supernatural the minute he bit the dust.


End file.
